Archive for category university
Put your money where your mouth is
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, university on March 26, 2011
Stepping it up this week a bit in the ‘modelling-best-practice’ stakes…
It occured to me that as I am advocating the importance of studying texts and their traditions to…well basically, the development of human society as we know it, that I’m not doing enough of this in my own university classes.
Last week I got a real buzz relating the theoretical material in this unit to contemporary texts and practices, namely to the story of Terminator II and to the ‘Pirates vs Ninjas’ meme. So this week I am using another text as a way to relate to theory, this time going into even more depth.
I have chosen the film Pleasantville. I am going to use this film to explore ‘critical literacy’ and interrogate the resistance to critical reading of text in secondary English.
Yes I am.
Now, to construct the learning experiences.
In the lecture I am going to focus in on metalanguage, showing students how historical paradigms of English curriculum (skills, cultural heritage, personal growth, critical-cultural) have been revisioned in two more recent literacy frameworks that have had significant influence on contemporary English curriculum – Luke and Freebody’s ‘Four Resources’ model, and Green’s ‘Three Dimensions’ of literacy (which we have already been using at length). I’m also going to rock their world by showing them how subject-specific pedagogy relates to more general theories of pedagogy, such as the ‘Productive Pedagogies’ that are used here in QLD, as well as to theories of learning such as Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy.
The two hour tutorial though. Hmmm.
My message in the coming weeks will be to embrace ‘workshops’ as well as individual and group ‘project based learning’ as alternative approaches to lesson organisation. I want them to start thinking about how we traditionally do “class” and what learning experiences are encouraged there. As I’m electing to ‘put my money where my mouth is’ this week I suppose I should give them a taste of this too…but what to do?
Perhaps I will split the two hours into a ‘workshop’ and a ‘project’. Will I have time for both? I’d like to also screen the first ~20 minutes of the film in class, giving me 30 minutes for the rest of the workshop.
That leaves ~50 minutes for students to complete a seperate project. But what?
I’ve been watching Bianca do this – I know I need to start with a driving question or challenge…
…
…and thus I am away to make coffee and have a think about this.
Ideas welcome x
Motivation and Participation in Asynchronous Online Discussions
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, online tools, research, social media, technology, university on March 24, 2011
I was very interested to read the findings of Xie, Durrington and Yen (2011) published in the recently released issue of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Given my current use of Twitter in my own university unit for preservice teachers, I was glad to read that others were also observing a relationship between participation in online asynchronous discussions and students’ level of motivation. I have reproduced their abstract here:
This study investigated the relationship between students’ motivation and their participation in asynchronous online discussions during a 16-week online course. Fifty-six students participated in
online discussion activities as a normal part of their classes. Their motivation for participating in online discussions was self-reported three times throughout the semester. The findings continue to
indicate that students’ motivation has a significant relationship with their participation in online discussion activities at time two and time three. Students’ perceived value, autonomy, competence,
and relatedness have different levels of impact on their online discussion behavior. This study also found that students’ intrinsic motivation and their perceived value of online discussions remained at a moderate-high level over time, although the perceived value had a significant drop from the midpoint to the end of the semester.Keywords: Asynchronous Online Discussion, Motivation, Distance Learning, Collaborative
Learning, Learning Community
Reading this article has motivated me to collect my own data in the next week of classes, to gather some initial responses from my own students. I look forward to hearing their views!
Hunting for twits
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, online tools, social media, technology, university on March 23, 2011
Of the roughly 85 students in my English Curriculum Studies unit, currently about 62 are following our class twitter account @CLB_018
No mean feat considering it is only week 4.
However, it is week 4 of a 9 week unit, meaning we’re almost half way done (eek! I still have so much to SAY!)
Aaaand, I’m aware that a small handful of those followers may be spamish.
So today I am embarking on a twit hunt – hunting through my list of followers to see who has not tweeted anything (many only joined for class and only follow the class profile). I’m going to DM each of them individually and privately to encourage them to participate.
Am I going overboard in doing this?
On one hand this looks exactly like the kind of time-consuming ‘tech monitoring’ that teachers often tell me they don’t like about teaching online.
On the other hand, I see it as analogous to checking students’ workbooks a few weeks in to term and pointing out their missing work. Is this something that University teachers see as beyond the scope of their ‘job’? I don’t.
But please – please – tell me if you think this is too much, or if this seems like a good strategy to you. Especially if you do something similar – did it work?
Change agents – Pirates vs Ninjas
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, social media, technology, university on March 22, 2011
I was prompted by Binaca today to look for an old post of mine on giving feedback to students. In my search I was delighted to find it had been almost exactly one year since I wrote this post about the tension caused by curriculum change, especially in regards to integrating ICTs:
Let’s make sure we’re applying the ‘too much is too much’ rule across the board, and not just as an excuse/a reason for neglecting the new. If what we mean is ‘we haven’t had enough PD to use this right’ then by all means say that. But there are some things that would be good to drop out of our current practice to make room for the new. One thing that we know about teaching is that no matter what you are taught to do, as a teacher you will instinctively model your practice on the teaching you received at school. Fighting against this instinct takes concentration, and learning about new practices and tools takes a lot of work. Because of this, teachers who are embracing technology are feeling increasingly overloaded and burnt out – this is the real problem that needs managing.
In a later post I tried to be more generative than reflective by reframing the process of change, suggesting that:
…as educational leaders, if we want to help people come to terms with change and embrace it, then we need to recognise and validate their desire to stick with ‘the known’…Recognising that people are resisting change because they feel disempowered helps us to employ methods that give power back.
These lines of thinking manifested in the lecture I gave today to preservice English teachers on how to navigate change amidst all of the ‘theories of text and response’ that they had learned so far.
You may be pleased (dismayed?) to watch how I liken the characteristics of change agents to either the NINJA or PIRATE side of the popular theoretical battle, Pirates vs Ninjas 😀
I think I am mostly pirate!
don’t put me in a box, man
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, personal, university on March 15, 2011
In honour of my wonderful students in English Curriculum Studies 1 who I suspect this week are getting a leeettle fed up with a seemingly endless web of theoretical models for curriculum and pedagogy.
But don’t worry, as Charlie would say, we are “winning“!
Peace!
Howard: Well, you know. About, me. I’m a free spirit, Vince.
Vince: Yeah?
Howard: Yeah I can’t be hemmed in. People try. They try to put me in a box, but I break free.
Vince: Who’s trying to put you in a box?
Howard: It’s the nature of me. It’s the nature of Howard Moon.
Vince: Who’s trying to put you in a box?
Howard: Well, people, you know. The Man.
Vince: Have you contacted the police about this?
Howard: No, “The Man”. You know what I’m talking about, yeah?
Vince: What are you on about?
Howard: People are always trying to put people in boxes.
Vince: No one’s trying to put you in a box. You’re the wrong size, for a start.
Howard: [sighing] Let’s forget about this conversation, okay?
Vince: How would you even get in a box?The Mighty Boosh, Series 1 Episode 8 ‘The Hitcher’
The English Teacher – Visual Rep.
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, online tools, university on March 6, 2011
In my English Curriculum Studies classes this week students should all be bringing in a bag containing five items that they think symbolise what they want to be as an English teacher. This activity is supposed to help stimulate discussion about discourses and people’s different philosophies of teaching. I’m going to do the activity too – so far I have a couple of ideas, but in the meantime I thought I would post this collage that I recently made as a visual representation of English teachers/teaching:
It was made using polyvore.com a favourite site of mine where you can make digital collages using ‘clippings’ from images on other sites. If you’ve never seen it then go check out some of the sets I’ve collected that I think could relate to the school curriculum – I hope it gets you thinking!
The Blender
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, technology, university on February 24, 2011
‘The Blender’ is the nickname for the Faculty of Education’s blended learning room at QUT, B.240
Our blended learning space is designed with six movable group hubs, each with an egg shaped table (really great design imo), movable chairs and a digital electronic workstation. There is also a store room containing a trolley of 20 laptops. Yesterday I went in to take some snaps:
The question is: Will it Blend?
One of the features of blended learning is that it uses a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous instruction. To this end I have already created a unit blog and twitter account that will be used by activity groups in all lessons. Now comes the hard bit – how to change my pedagogy so that more than one thing can be going on in this room at once. This will involve considering:
- how I position myself in the room (which table do I sit at?)
- how to control group work noise (a struggle with year 9 anyway)
- how to create discrete ‘learning spaces’ (I want a cave and a campfire, but will work in a room shared by other teachers?)
- whether this room is as massive as it seems (the tables and chairs aren’t easily removed making the table/group setting an unavoidable focus).
My ideas so far include:
- students starting each tutorial at a table with their ‘reading group’ to reflect on the scholarly materials set for the week
- moving to whole class activity or teacher-lead discussion/screening (we could all come sit on the floor/roll our chairs into a theatre style for this)
- students all breaking away at some point into ‘activity groups’ (different to their ‘reading groups’) to engage in collaborative and connected learning activities
- having at all times a range of individual tasks (housed on the blog?) for students to work independently on (so no-one ends up sitting around doing nothing while one group member writes discussion notes on a blog etc.)
I love this room so much, and can see so much potential in it. I’d love to hear any ideas that other teachers have for using this space effectively…there’s a movie of the book already, lol:
What I Teach
Posted by kmcg2375 in online tools, university on January 26, 2011
Cheering because my name is now on the website for English Curriculum Studies 1 in the Faculty of Education at QUT:
(click to enlarge)
What advice can you offer my preservice teachers for productive/generative tweeting? Or advice for me, for using it in the classroom?
(Pictures of The Blender to come!)
IFTE Conference Seminar 2011
Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, education, english, university on December 2, 2010
In April 2011 the International Federation for the Teaching of English is holding its triennial conference in Auckland, New Zealand.
I’ve proposed the following seminar – fingers crossed it’s something they want to see!
The English teacher-practitioner: Re-writing our role
This seminar will weave together two strands of reflection on the nature of English teachers’ work. On one hand the nature of assessment in English will be considered, with a critical exploration of the relationship between standardised assessment and teachers’ capacity to positively engage in providing formative feedback. A central question that participants will be asked to reflect on is ‘how can we reconceptualise our role as a co-practitioner in the classroom and consequently find more enjoyment in the marking process?’ The second line of reflection will be a recount of my own journey to seek an antidote to the processes of ‘school writing’ and recommendations for avenues that other English teachers can explore to stimulate their own creativity and willingness to see themselves as a practitioner as well as a teacher of others.
English teachers: would you want to come to this? If you came along, what would you be expecting/hoping to hear about?
So, what do you actually do?
Posted by kmcg2375 in reflections, university on November 21, 2010
Recently I’ve had explain to more and more people what I do in my job as a University Lecturer.
This is tough, because no matter how much I try to jazz it up, until I get another ‘big research project’ that I can talk about, the description just sounds like ‘oh, you know – reading and stuff’. And ‘my head is like a giant computer that mostly knows about teaching English’ just sounds a bit loony.
Up until last week I was still in teaching time. This made life easier – I could describe giving lectures and grading essays. But now that I’m on the research clock…well, things are a whole lot less defined.
I saw a great summary in a faculty email today of the three core criteria comprising our definition of research activity:
- publications,
- HDR supervision,
- research grants/consultancies.
That’s a nice list to use I guess. And given that I don’t have any students to supervise yet, or any research grants, I guess that leaves me with publishing over the summer.
So, in terms of what that means I will do with my actual time? With the actual minutes of my day?
Looks like I am up against a lot of computer time, more self-directed learning, lots of getting to know journals in the field, and reassembling bits of old writing into new hopefully interesting things to read…so much to do and so little to talk about, in short. But, so far, I still love it.
I wonder if my blog will get boring?
I wonder if I’ll need glasses soon?
Too Much Reading
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